


Summer Tones

by shleeps



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Abuse, Angst, Billy Hargrove & Maxine "Max" Mayfield Bonding, Billy Hargrove Has a Crush on Steve Harrington, Billy Hargrove Redemption, Billy Hargrove Tries to Be a Better Person, Bisexual Billy Hargrove, Bisexual Steve Harrington, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Eventual Romance, Eventual Smut, Fluff, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Period Typical Attitudes, Recreational Drug Use, Season 3 Doesn't Even Happen, Slow Burn, Steve Harrington is a Sweetheart, lots of color depictions/use of color, mentions of abuse
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-31
Updated: 2020-06-24
Packaged: 2021-02-27 05:07:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 18,993
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22041541
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shleeps/pseuds/shleeps
Summary: From Enemies to Friends to Something Even MoreAll Described With Color Galore -Laughs, Cries, and ScreamsMake Those Summer Tones Gleam.
Relationships: Billy Hargrove/Steve Harrington
Comments: 23
Kudos: 63





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hi there! This is a little something that I want to play and test the waters with. I have never written an 'Enemies to Friends to Lovers' story and damn am I happy that the day has come for me to try it out. My goal to write a full story surrounding Billy and Steve where they go through the experience of becoming friends and then lovers as time progresses between them. This is an apologetic Billy story so in that case, let me apologize to everyone who doesn't like those kinds of stories and the cliché in general, however, I want to ask that you read the entire first chapter before you decide that you don't want to read it because of that cliché. 
> 
> Another thing to note is that I love the use of colors in writing. There are so many insane ways to use color to for symbols, tone, metaphors, foreshadowing, alluding- just endless possibilities and thus why, this first chapter is called 'Primary Colors'. Primary colors are the base of all, the colors show the chaos and calm between what emotion or reaction they may convey. Red can stand for anger and distrust, blue can stand for sadness and tranquility, and yellow can stand for anxiety and optimism (of which they are all used for these purposes in this chapter!).
> 
> But anyway, I hope you all enjoy the first chapter of Summer Tones!  
> tumblr - shleepys  
> :)

**_May 21st, 1985_ **

**_Primary Colors_ **

“ _Fuck_ ,” Steve Harrington whispered, bracing for impact as someone pushes him into another. He’s getting - trying to get through the crowd before the song dies out and another more upbeat than before takes its place, before he gets shoved to the ground, trampled over, and stomped on until he dies. The place _reeked_ of booze and sweat, the drunken teenagers around him screaming with slurred speech in a challenge to overpower the music screaming through the speakers. Red light bulbs replaced regular ones in every port they could go in the house. Ceiling fans and lamps all glowing with an array of fire and coating everything below them. The lights twisting the familiar faces around him into ones that were bloody, the beat of an overplayed song pounding his temples into his skull, the ground swaying where he needed to go and taunted with its sharp movements.

Months had passed, and Steve didn’t go to a single party, not one. Maybe Nancy had something to do with it, or better yet Hargrove had a part in it, but he didn’t know. He didn’t want to know. Hearing about a party put a bitter taste in his mouth, and thinking in-depth about one made him physically recoil in disgust. But, someway and somehow, someone dragged him into one and convinced him to stay until it ended. Well, he actually couldn’t leave until it ended. He didn’t have a car, he was driven there by someone at the party meaning that until they were ready to go, he couldn’t leave.

The very last night of their school year, graduation had already happened and this party being the aftermath of it. Every single person in his grade and some in lower were here, but of course, Nancy and Jonathan weren’t. He didn’t expect them to come and if they had then he just hadn’t seen them yet. Just a cliché ‘my parents aren’t home’ party in a house packed full of drunks. _Fun_.

Another bump and push and he escaped the onslaught of sweaty mindless bodies, allowing him to run to the wall and find some remarkably tiny amount of safety with it. At least part of the problem was out of the way, but for how long? A silent groan slid past Steve’s lips as he let the wall catch his head and his eyes slam shut, the burgundy lights still passing his eyelids. His heart and head were thumping faster than the beat, slowly making him feel the need to scream and cry to get something out before his body exploded.

Footsteps were treading near, closer and closer to him until they were a little too close. His eyes fluttered open and formed into a squint, tilting his head to the side to see who intruded on his personal bubble. Hargrove stood towering over him with the ghost of a smile playing at his lips, disgustingly beautiful baby blues nearly violet under the red lights but full of something Steve hadn’t seen from him before. _Concern_.

“You aight, Harrington? You don’t look too good.”

Steve stood straight and cleared his throat. “I’m good- just tired.”

He made a noise of disagreement, “Call me a damned liar, but I think you’re more than just tired.” Billy fidgeted with the hem of his denim pocket as they stood next to the wall, a new song even more upbeat and thunderous than any previous beginning to take ahold of the mind’s in the room and force them to drunkenly screech and convulse in dance.

Steve furrowed his brows at him, “. . . How did you know I was here?”

“I saw you walk through the crowd, you looked like you were about to throw up, and so I followed you. . . and maybe Tommy also told me earlier. But ‘wasn’t like I had a search warrant in your name, Harrington. Just making sure you’re fine.” Steve searched over Billy’s face, a shiver ripping up his spine as he took in unfamiliar features and noted them. Bags of purple hung under his eyes, lips twisted into a frown, no cocky brow raise or shark-like smile, he looked. . . dead, like he wasn’t himself.

“Are you okay?” Steve questioned, observing the look of confusion plastering itself across the others face. 

“Of course I’m fine. I’m tired of the drunken assholes who won’t stop screaming every lyric of these damn songs. But, I guess that’s just because I haven’t had much to drink.” Billy turned away from the other, watching over the sea of people as they waved around like a field of wheat in a thunderstorm. “Do you wanna go in the front? I need to smoke for a bit, get out of here before shove my foot up someone’s ass.”

Steve glared, “Like mine, again?” Billy let out a strained half-hearted laugh, hitching his hands in his coat pockets.

“Maybe, maybe not.” An awkward pause and look between the two shook as pictures rattled behind them. Billy contemplated what to say next like they were playing a game of chess, pondering what move he would play, how he could word this to not sound snarky. He swallowed and slowly spoke, “ _Look_ , I really want to talk to you Harrington, in someplace preferably silent or generally just quieter than this shit-show.”

Billy tried to flash a grin, even if it turned into a weak one, but all it came out to be an anxious quirk with the corners. Hargrove being serious with him? _Dead serious_? “Lead the way, Hargrove.”

The full throttle of another song attempted to sneak out with the two as they went onto the front porch, however, the door refused to let it get to them by cutting the tone down. Crickets sang their silent muse along with the vibrations of the music in the dark patches of grass that were untouched by the change in blue porch light that coated everything in an ocean of navy. Warmth hugged him from the summer breezes that ghosted across what exposed skin they had, the wind twirling a few plastic cups across the yard in front of them. Steve sat down on the gritty steps leading to the door with a new sense of anxiety. A million things could take place, a million different opportunities for Billy to turn this into some ploy so he could beat the shit out of him.

Something stole his attention as it _scratched_ and _flickered,_ Billy’s lighter flared out to greet the cigarette edging his lips until the end emitted a pale red. Billy sat down with a _ploof_ right next to Steve as smoke rolled smoothly out and disappeared into the air above.

“What did you want to talk about?” Steve questioned, fiddling with the end of his shirt.

Billy’s head cocked to the side in thought. Stray blonde hairs stuck to his glimmering forehead and thumb slid intently up and down his cigarette. The game of chess had come back in session. “There is a lot that I wanted to talk to you about.” Steve watched a shaky cigarette drag and exhale of turquoise smoke. "So, let's start with how your day has been going, shall we?"

"How my day has been going?" Steve cocked a brow in confusion from the random question.

"That's what I said."

Steve rolled his eyes. "It's quite frankly been nothing but shit. I was an idiot and said I wanted to come here, and now my ride home is off somewhere drunk and probably in the pool."

Billy let out a small huff, "You couldn't drive yourself here?"

"My parents are out of town for the next I don't know how long. I don't have a car."

"Ah, I see." Billy licked his upper lip as silence overcame them both. "I could always drive you home," he mumbled.

". . .What?"

"I said, I could always drive you home, Harrington. God, I hope that shitty music didn't make you deaf, I'd rather not have to repeat myself twenty- or no maybe thirty!-"

"Alright, I get it, Hargrove!"

Another moment of silence.

Billy licked his bottom lip, eyes tracing between the cigarette and Steve. "So, me driving you home, is it a yes or no?"

". . . If you're okay with driving me back, then yes."

"I mean, I wouldn’t've asked if not." Billy gestured the cigarette to Steve, the embers gleaming in excitement as Harrington took a puff and ash fluttered away as if encouraging Hargrove to start spilling.

“One thing I knew I wanted to,” a pause, “I _needed_ to talk about was the way I have always acted towards you. And I know, I know, I seem like I’m on some kind of drug talking to you like the way I am right now, but Max brought up some shit that’s been making me think for the past two weeks and driving me absolutely goddamn insane.”

The music reaching to escape the barrier of the door faded out of existence as Steve focused on what the other said. This was a man to man- a person to person talk bound to be packed full of some sort of sentiment, and Steve had no clue what to expect out of it.

“I’m sorry, sorry for the things I’ve done to you and everyone else in this world. I regret it so goddamn much Steve. I’m an asshole, I have been for the majority of my fucking life and I try to escape it, but it always finds it’s goddamn way right back to me like some kind of shadow I don’t want to follow. I shouldn’t have beaten you up at the Byers or fuck with you the way I have been. It wasn’t right. . .” Billy scoffed at himself, a grave self-deprecating ‘ha’ forcing itself out from the back of his throat, his voice thickening with pain. “But I guess you wouldn’t care that I’m apologizing, you wouldn’t care a single bit. I’ve caused you an insane amount of pain. I deserve to be spat on, shoved to the ground, beat to a pulp- fucking _killed_.” He half-heartedly laughed through an incoming sob as the corners of his eyes pricked and pinched. “I don’t deserve this chance to apologize to you.”

Billy tried to blink back tears in an attempt to prevent himself from crying in front of Steve, showing any form of weakness he had taught himself to hide for all these years, but it didn’t work. Not this time. “I fucking _hate_ Neil, I _hate_ that I turned into what he wanted me to be.” The glossed over irises spouted rivers, pouring and streaming down his cheeks as he somberly cackled and heaved for air. “ _I turned into him._ ” His lungs were set ablaze in the madness and laughing soon switched for pleas in the form of sobbing. A plea for some sort of change, a plea for forgiveness, a plea for something more than the same cycle of torment. He wanted to get out of this town and away from Neil, find his mom and make things right between them both. He tried to hide his face with his palm but instead subconsciously wiped away the streams leaving bitter trails down the sides, the cyan overcast making it seem as if his eyes were glowing. 

Steve’s eyes burned and blurred as his emotions ran rampant, copying what Billy had done earlier, laughing through a sob while empathy joined trapeze artists in a mission to bend and break his heartstrings. There was a barrier between them, like with the music and the door. A barrier of knowing, being knowledgeable about one another. Steve didn’t know about his home life, what has led him up to this point. But, he knew what the other spoke of, what he wept for forgiveness about. 

“I-,” Steve’s voice quivered as he shifted to face the other. Billy let out a loud sniff as he tried to frantically take control of himself, he gave another short pain-filled chuckle as he shakily turned to the other with brows furrowed. He exploded into tears again, his mind like a waterfall that had been blocked and building up with pushed down emotions until tonight. The breakdowns never happened in front of anyone, they were always in the middle of the night after days- weeks- months of suppressing and regretting everything, sobbing and heaving into his pillow until the sun greeted the horizon and kissed the dark sky with red, wishing his mom would come, someone would come to fix it all and help him escape reality for just a minute, a second. These breakdowns never happened in front of anyone, so Billy didn’t know how to stop the resentment bubbling and burning in his chest with every breath he took. Thoughts ripped him apart as he got in his own head.

_Steve wouldn’t understand. Steve is going to tell everyone. Neil is going to find out._

Billy shakily stood up from the cement hurling his cigarette to the cement to abandon and let glow until it eventually died. “But, you wouldn’t understand pretty boy-” His voice trembled, “You’ve never experienced a damn bit of rejection or heartbreak or abuse in your fucking life! You’d rather tell everyone in damn Hawkins what’s happened tonight just to fuck with me Harrington- to get everyone to join to ‘make fun of Billy’ train!"

Steve shot up from the staircase, a lump shifting and bouncing in his throat as he responded, “Billy, stay. Okay? Stay here, let’s fucking talk. Just me and you.”

“I don’t fucking want to! And, you know what? _I don’t fucking have to!_ ” 

“Well, good for fucking you, Hargrove! But I want you to shut the fuck up for a second and listen to me because this- is just- the whole idea you have for me- it’s this misconception of me!” Steve yelled.

Billy started for the door, his hands ghosting the handle before being yanked back by the jacket collar and spun around to face Steve. Spit flew from his mouth as Billy hissed, “I’m going to break your jaw if you don’t stop, Harrington! _I know your intentions, I know who you are-!_ ”

“I haven’t walked a single day in your shoes, have you walked a day in mine? A day of mine a year ago? Fuck no you didn’t, because you had godamn clue who I was a year ago and I had no idea who you were either! I was an asshole, every single person my friends sought out to be lower than us as a lesser human being- a goddamn nobody was treated with the same challenge every time to provide the most extreme forms of emotional and physical bullying the entire town of Hawkins has ever seen! But you know what? I’d rather be a nobody than stick to the expectations that have been given to me- the expectation to push- spit on, shove to the ground, beat to a pulp- _Billy_ .” A choked sob erupted from his throat. “ _I fucking understand_.” 

They stood there, eyes _deadlocked_ , their tears sparkling in indigo. Brows fell out of their rigid place, grinding teeth came to a stop, nostrils relaxed. Steve slowly whispered, "But, you are right. I don't understand some things. I don't know what happened to you before you moved here or what goes on in your home life. So, help me. Help me understand you. _I'm here for you_. _I can help you._ "

Billy inhaled sharply, a sorrow-filled laugh filling the blank space of silence that had been floating there after Steve finished. Steve continued standing there staring into the other's eyes, hoping that his attempt to calm Billy down and hold an olive tree branch with him would stay and succeed. 

“I would appreciate that, Steve.” He paused, taking a long sniff as he played with the hem of his jacket despite his vision being blurred from the tears seeping out. “I really would.” Another long sniff. “Are you ready to go? I don’t think we should stay. I don’t want to stay.”

“I can drive if you want me to, Billy.” Billy made a face at him that screamed, _oh hell_ _no_.

He smacked his lips and sniffed again, “Firstly, I asked you if you wanted a ride home,” he paused, now holding a finger up to the other’s face, “secondly how do I know you’re not a bad driver?”

“I mean there is only one way to find out if I am,” Steve smirked. Billy rose a brow, a cocky smile sliding its way onto his face as his arm came back to his side.

“No, and that’s my final answer.”

“Awn, really? I was excited to get to crash your Camaro.” 

Billy rolled his eyes and let out a tiny chuckle. “Yeah, sorry-” He started to walk away from Steve, hopping down the steps with another sniff and starting towards his parked car. “The driver's seat’s off-limits, pretty boy!” 

Yellow car lights paved a path down the overcast roads they drove on, Steve giving directions when they neared turns or stops, every once in awhile catching himself staring at Billy’s hands and noting how his grip altered with the ending of songs on the radio, how he had a bandage wrapped around his thumb, how he chewed on his thumbnail when they stopped at signs and twisted in his seat to look both ways. He observed him but didn’t say a thing. A feeling of nervousness washed over him, his mind lecturing him about how that they said anything that an awkward entity would clutch their necks and asphyxiate them - as if it weren’t clawing at their seats, saliva dripping off its chin as it prepares to climb over the center console and go in for the kill.

Billy could sense it too, fear bubbling in his chest as he continued to drive and the figure towering over him twisted a coil of his hair around its long forefinger. He took a deep breath before partially switching his attention to Steve. A quick glance in hopes to break the thickening air and start some small talk, however, he caught him staring back. They locked eyes for a few seconds before breaking the stare and going back to the road. Watching the silhouettes of trees whipping by and waiting for something to fucking kill what had its hand sliding up their torsos for the skin on their neck. 

Billy pulled into the driveway, put the car in park, and turned to Steve, waiting in silence for something- anything to come out of his mouth, but all Steve could do is stare back and expect the exact same from him. 

“Um,” Steve mumbled.

“Um, yeah. We’re at your place, home, casa-” his hand moved with every word for ‘home’ he could list off, Steve rolled his eyes.

“I’m aware, trust me I’m aware.” 

_Silence_.

Steve fiddled with the hem of his shirt. “I almost don’t. . . I don’t want to leave you alone.”

“What?” Billy cocked a brow.

“I don’t want to leave you alone. Okay?” Steve couldn’t look the other in the eyes - not from fear, but embarrassment. He sheepishly started again, continuing to focus on anything but Billy, focus on a million other things other than Billy. “You can stay the night at my house if you want to. I have a couch in my bedroom I can sleep on, you can have the bed.”

Billy noted the little quirks about Steve in the darkness, like how when he was refusing to face him, he continuously chewed at his bottom lip and his fingers did dances on whatever piece of clothing he had on. He noted the anxiety that took form in faint dark circles under his eyes and bobbing in his throat as he swallowed. “I’ll stay,” Billy whispered, watching over the other’s face for a reaction.

Steve tore his attention away from the nothingness and their eyes deadlocked, faint smiles replacing the frowns that stood there. 

Getting out of the car, passing through the front door, and going up the stairs became a breeze knowing Hargrove followed every step he took, knowing that tonight maybe Billy took the opportunity to escape and feel safe in what he referred earlier to his place, home, casa.

Steve laid on the bed with his arms resting above his head, counting every space and line that was embedded into the ceiling before turning to face the bathroom door. He didn’t know why his face got red hot or why it felt so different seeing Billy take off his shirt to get in the shower, but it just did. The privacy of the whole situation was weird. Everything tonight was weird. _Weird_.

Eventually, the natural yellow light emitting from his lamp had disappeared with the _click_ of its switch. They were left in the darkness of Steve’s room to lay and ponder. To ponder everything leading up to this very moment where Billy Hargrove was sleeping in Steve Harrington’s bed, but of course without him in it. Steve slept on the couch in the room, continuing to stare up at the ceiling and make some sort of sense out of the imaginative colors that danced in his vision and what exactly happened tonight. Steve went to a party, had an emotional breakdown with his worst enemy, and now they’re sleeping in the same room, wide awake as ever with the same question toying with their minds.

_What were they now?_


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hargrove bit his lip, worry joined the overcast of tangerine on his face. “Sorry about that.”
> 
> “You have nothing to apologize for,” Steve groaned, slowly twisting his body to get up. “I’m guessing you had a good night, your hair looks like shit.”
> 
> “Oh wow, thanks. At least mine can be fixed, it’s too bad your face can’t be.” Billy chuckled.

**_May 22nd, 1985_ **

**_Orange_ **

**_The Next Day_ **

Orange bled through the curtains and cascaded across the carpeted floor in a dance that ran up and down the walls depending on how the outreaching tree branches next to Steve’s window swayed with the warm morning wind. Little patterns of leaves added to their beautiful muse as they met with the ceiling and melded with the white textured paint to make a peach overlay. Billy's eyes flickered open to be greeted by the sun's kisses and brows furrow at the change in his environment. He had forgotten he stayed the night at Steve's house, so the sudden jerk and crinkling of his nose as he sat up with eyes wide in someone else's bedsheets was more than called for.

For a second he thought he had a one night stand and forgot to wake up at the crack of dawn to sneak out the front door, the next second he thought that maybe he slept in the wrong room of his own house, but then it hit him, all the realization at once like an out of control train.

_Steve._

_Everything with Steve, everything that happened last night with Steve._

_**Steve.** _

Where was Steve?

A frown twisted at his lips as he searched the room with his eyes, panic thumping in his chest until a movement from the couch broke his surveying. Steve slept on the couch. Right, he thought, why did I forget that.

A barely audible groan slipped past Steve’s lips as he shifted around, his body flipping to expose his face and his arm throwing itself over the one of the couch. A growing fear bubbled in Billy’s chest that he woke the other up, however, Steve let out a tiny snore that allowed him to relax. He huffed in relief, hand trailing up to his pendant where he twisted it around his finger. A few unruly hairs had fallen in his face when he whipped up, but he allowed them to stay there as he watched Steve. Observed him. Pick apart the colors and features of his face basking in the tangerine glow.

The light began it’s dance on his face and moved to an imaginary beat as the wind altered in speed, dusting his hair with a shine that Billy couldn’t exactly describe. Surreal first came to mind when he tried to think of a word to describe all of this. Surreal was staring at the beauty marks dashed across the other’s face, surreal was sitting on this bed with an overcast of saffron whirling his emotions into a mix of anxiety and safety, surreal was. . . beginning to be what he hoped wasn’t enemies with Steve. No longer enemies with knives held at each other's throats, but potentially friends. Friends that supported one another and understood.

Billy subconsciously bit his lip as he continued to toy with the necklace, questions swirling around his mind. What if this was a ploy? Did Steve lie to him just to make him feel better about himself, to take his mind off the situation he bears? _What were they now?_

“Goddamnit,” Steve hissed, unleashing a yawn as he stretched. Billy focused on the other with eyes wide, Steve’s coming into focus and staring at the other with a feeling of unknowing underlying fear grabbing onto his body. He forgot too.

“Morning, sunshine.” Billy joked as he threw his legs over the side of the bed and stood up. Just hide it, hide the fact you were being a creep, he thought. “You sleep well?”

Steve shot him a glare, “Sunshine?”

Billy chuckled, orange caressing every visible crevasse his body had to offer while he stretched his arms above his head, his pendant swinging from his neck as he bent over to touch his toes leaving Steve to scratch the back of his head and pretend to look away. Damn did Hargrove have a nice body. A nice ass too, which was a part of the body obviously- god Steve’s mind liked to run at a million miles an hour when he got all flustered. Words tripping over words. Billy yawned,

“You didn’t answer my question, Harrington.”

“Uh- I slept well. My back feels like shit.”

Hargrove bit his lip, worry joined the overcast of tangerine on his face. “Sorry about that.”

“You have nothing to apologize for,” Steve groaned, slowly twisting his body to get up. “I’m guessing you had a good night, your hair looks like shit.”

“Oh wow, thanks. At least mine can be fixed, it’s too bad your face can’t be.” Billy chuckled.

Steve rolled his eyes, he supposed bitterly but playfully insulting one another was going to stick around if they were going to be. . . friends? Still a question unanswered. “Get your clothes on and come downstairs.”

· . · . · . ·

Billy fingered through his keys, thumb intently sliding up and down the grooves before he looked up to Harrington. He weakly smiled, “Thank you for letting me stay. I appreciate it, ya know?”

Steve cocked a brow, smiling right back at him. He leaned against the cool kitchen counter where the sun crept through the blinds and allowed the pale orange to mask his body, Billy stood next to him, but not too close. He feared it would freak the other out. “Don’t mention it.” He took a breath, “If you ever need a place to stay, sneak into my backyard and throw rocks at my window.”

“No- I think I’ll just climb up the side of your house and break in myself, Harrington.”

“As if, Hargrove.”

Billy stuck his tongue out at him before a bubbly chuckle rang out, his tongue trapped between his teeth as he laughed. Steve rolled his eyes and mocked him. Then, silence. An awkward silence. An _uncomfortable_ silence.

Steve’s eyes shot between Billy and the floor, wanting to say something but hadn’t a clue if he was taking too far of steps, if Billy even wanted to do anything after this, if there was going to be ‘anything after this’. “Um-”

“Um- what?” Billy’s brow rose, that cocky smile shifting off his lips.

“Do you want to, after today- it doesn’t have to be this week it could be the next- or the month after this one-”

“Spit it out, Harrington.”

“Do you want to do something? Just the two of us?” Steve stared at the sink, trying to avoid eye contact until a soft amused huff came from Billy.

“Yeah, pick a date and we go. As long as I don’t have something going on.” He paused, “Where do you even want to go?”

Steve pondered, his fingers tapping on the counter. A movie would be nice, that Indiana Jones movie was coming out tomorrow, but he didn’t watch the first one. Eating out? No, he feared they would argue over who would pay. “You know that record shop on Mulberry?”

“The one across that general store?”

“Yeah, Melvin’s!”

Billy’s nose wrinkled in confusion, “I’m pretty sure it’s not called ‘Melvin’s’.”

“Yeah it is!” Steve smirked, “I know it is.”

“We’ll see about that, pretty boy.” Billy licked his upper lip, that familiar toothy grin popping on his face as he began to walk away from the counter and towards the front doors, keying making a racket as they swung from his fingers. “We’ll see next week! Get Max to tell me when!”

Steve listened to the door echo as it slammed, the ticking of the clock above his fridge filling the void of silence with something other than the roar of his breath. The ghost of a smile took over his lips. Telling Max meant that he would have to give some sort of vague phrase to her only for it to get twisted in assumptions. Saying ‘Thursday’ or ‘Friday’ had some kind of connotation that they were going to fight, but if they were ever going to hang out then it would have to be that way.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She bit the inside of her cheek again, preparing to start another conversation and move on from this one. “What were you and Steve talking about?”
> 
> Billy didn’t answer her for a while, instead, he pondered. Pondered how he should tell Max. Pondered if he should tell Max. “Me and Steve are just having a little personal time. That’s all.”
> 
> He could sense that cock of her eyebrow, he knew it was there. “Personal time?” she asked.

_**May 29th, 1985** _

_**Purple** _

_**A Week Later** _

Niel and Susan had gone out. To where? Billy didn’t know.

What did he know? That the sky fell into purple, embracing the magenta waves that connected the light with the dark. Gradients of colors fading into the inevitability of the moon’s touch. His Camaro lowly purred as it coasted to a stop in front of the Wheeler’s house and his eyes darting about to check for Max until they reached her abandoned skateboard turned over on the cement. She must be inside.

His tongue drew over his teeth before he unbuckled himself and got out of the car, slamming his car door behind him. He told her to call her an hour ago to make sure that everything went smoothly, to check up on her so if Dad came home that he could give an update without getting the shit beat out of him. Angry couldn’t describe how he felt, however, furious could. He didn’t focus on the purple lit path up to the door, all he focused on was the door. That damn white door.

His nostrils flared as he reached it, fist raising ready to pound, but then he remembered Mike’s parents, how they would react if he were to beat their front entrance down. A deep breath, then the press of the doorbell. _Look off, act pretty, pretend you aren’t about to go into one of the worst screaming fits Max has ever seen._ The door swung open and Billy turned with a smirk that got swept off his face when he realized who was there. Mike.

“Your parents home?”

Mike cocked a brow, “No, we’re being-”

“Ah- that’s all I need to know. You know where Max is, Wheeler?” Mike glared at him like he had asked a stupid question, Billy scowled in return.

“She’s downstairs, where else would she be? Mars?”

“Listen,” Billy started, prodding the other’s chest with his finger, “You tell her that she has two minutes to wrap everything up and get her ass up here or I’m going down there and bringing it up here myself-” He stopped dead in his tracks, like a deer amidst yellow headlights. Steve. Why Steve?

“Hargrove.” Steve walked up to the door, arms folding into his chest as he stared straight in Billy’s eyes.

“Harrington. I’ll be damned. I didn’t expect to see you here.” Mike went bug-eyed as he darted between the two, slowly backing away from the stare-down as the others rushed to see what was happening to only make the same exact expressions as Wheeler.

“Holy fuck,” Dustin spurted out.

Steve nearly spun around on his heels to yell at Dustin, “Hey- _watch your mouth,_ ” but instead barely turned his head, not breaking the eye contact between his ambers and Billy’s sapphires.

Max stood there next to El and Lucas, her heart thrashing with her ribcage as fear pumped it’s way into her veins. She could feel it though, feel the exact same terror ripping through all of her friends as they stood still, all thinking the same exact things. _Steve- Billy- Steve- Billy- Why aren’t they saying anything? Why are they just. . . staring?_

“When?”, Billy lowly whispered, his fingers tapping on the wooden trim of the door frame.

Steve let a smirk quirk his lips. “Tomorrow, Dachshunds, at twelve.” Billy slowly nodded, a smirk playing at his now.

“I’ll see you then,” he paused, gesturing for Max to get out of the house. “Make sure these little shits stay out of trouble, okay?”

“Yep. See ya, Max.” Billy rolled his eyes and chuckled, allowing Max to drift past him and grab her skateboard before waiting on the older, her heart picking up the speed and running rampant as the front door shut and Billy marched down the path towards her.

The others inside stared at Steve like he had just given Max the death sentence, not only that, but what were they planning to meet up?

Dustin was the first to speak up, “What was that?”

“Yeah- what the hell was that?” Mike added on.

“Again, _language!_ ” He paused, taking in each and every one of the glares that were reaching into his soul in an attempt to yank it out. He unfolded his arms and used his hands to talk. “It was nothing, nothing any of you need to worry about.”

Lucas butted in, “You’re going to Dachshunds?”

Confusion overthrew the glare on Will’s face, “The record shop?”

“Was I really that loud?” Steve asked.

“Yes,” all answered consecutively. Steve facepalmed himself.

Lucas spoke up again, “Don’t tell me you two are going to fight in a record store.”

“Actually, that would be cool! They could use the pieces of vinyl-” Dustin started.

“Hey-!” Steve yelled, not getting a single glance but El’s.

Mike rolled his eyes, “No, that wouldn’t be cool! Steve would get his ass kicked and have plastic lodged in his arm-”

“Ew-” El whispered.

“Hey!” Steve yelled, all of them staring at him again. “Don’t talk about it! Okay? Again, it’s nothing you need to worry about. End of the story! _So. Zip. It._ ” The punctuated endings had a sharp daggers attached to them, but it didn’t sting that bad when they were concerned for their babysitter. They would have to find out on their own. . . or Max would just tell them the next time they saw one another.

· . · . · . ·

“You mind-” Billy paused, taking a deep breath as he rapidly tapped the steering wheel with his thumb. “Why didn’t you call me?”

Max’s eyes shot to Billy, disregarding the dark magenta sky she had been staring at in hopes that he wouldn’t explode on her. She instantly knew something had been off when he took that breath. Her grip tightened on her skateboard as she searched the other for differences, something to give her a clue about what happened.

“Are you going to answer me, Max?”

“Yes-”

“Then answer me.” There was a quiver in his voice, like something scared him, like something was breathing down his neck and making the hairs on his arms stand straight.

Max bit the inside of her cheek, preparing for the worst to come out and scream at her. “I forgot.”

“You forgot? You seriously forgot?”

“. . .Yes.” She could hear him gulp. His thumb began to tap again. His nostrils flared. But nothing happened. Nothing came to insult her. Nothing screamed at her.

“I hope they’re not home yet. We were supposed to stay home. You- you were supposed to stay home, Max.”

Max twisted in her seat to look back outside, “I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.”

Silence, silence filled the air. Billy started again, knuckles turning white as he held onto the wheel, “Tell someone when you need to go next time. Tell them, ‘Hey! My sleazy fuckhole of a brother wants me to call him to make sure I’m alright so he doesn’t get the fucking shit beat out of him when he gets home!’”

Max bit the tip of her tongue, refusing to let it slither past her teeth and let her talk back to him, to say something snarky and get her in a whole lot of unneeded trouble.

“I always bite the bullet when it comes to watching out for you, Max.” Another tremble in his voice. “I hope you know that.”

Guilt slid under her eyes as he looked down, but she knew it was all for show, for her to feel bad. Billy didn’t really care about her. He only cared about what Dad would do if she wasn’t cared for. But, faulty to what she believed she knew, she was wrong. Billy cared about her, cared what would happen once he left and what would happen to her future, afraid that Max would end up in the same shitty deck of cards he had. But, it was a chain reaction, most of the time it was because Max had fucked him over, other times because Neil decided to change up the rules seemingly every other week and throw him under the bus when he didn’t know. He cared about her. She would think he smoked crack if he told her that. But, he cared about her.

She bit the inside of her cheek again, preparing to start another conversation and move on from this one. “What were you and Steve talking about?”

Billy didn’t answer her for awhile, instead he pondered. Pondered how he should tell Max. Pondered if he should tell Max. “Me and Steve are just having a little personal time. That’s all.”

He could sense that cock of her eyebrow, he knew it was there. “Personal time?” she asked.

“Yes,” he paused, “personal time.”

“You two aren’t going to fight. . . _are you?_ ”

“Nope. Personal time.”

“That’s vague.” She pulled her skateboard to her chest with a slight huff. If Billy didn’t want to tell her, then so be it. Max was going to figure out what ‘personal time’ meant one way or another, even if it meant sneaking out of the house and going on a mission with the others to do so.

· . · . · . ·

When Billy pulled into their driveway, the horizon had been washed over with indigo and navy. The cool colors had thrown the warms out of their vision so the moon could give them kisses with it’s rays of white light.

They were home. What did he want? Sleep.

But was he going to stay up for the next few hours thinking about everything that happened today? Yep.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Billy turned to him, a lump had made its way up into Steve’s throat with a plan full of destruction. “You look frustrated,” Steve spurted out, eyes darting around the others face to look for any changes to show some sort of harsh reality to him about how this all wasn’t going to work out, but nothing popped up.
> 
> Billy let out a half-hearted chuckle, putting the cassettes down into the box. “That’s because I am, pretty boy.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't believe I have acknowledged these in the previous chapters, but these things (· . · . · . ·) are for a transition from one point of view to another or a major shift in location! I've read a lot of Stephen King and let me tell you that sometimes you believe you have been reading from Character A's point of view and turns out you've been reading from Character B's that entire time. It sucks so I just wanted to let you all know why they're actually there for those that might've been confused by them. Happy reading! 
> 
> I should probably mention this a REALLY long 5000+ word chapter and so far the longest one by far so, again happy reading!

**_May 30th, 1985_ **

**_Green_ **

**_The Next Day_ **

The stoplight flicked to green as Billy and Steve sat there waiting for it to change. Time seemed to tick slower in the car, especially when silence wrapped them around its metaphorical finger. During the summer, driving around town always set this precedent of relaxation as clovers painted the space between the sidewalks and roads, and the ends of tree branches swayed with the warm wind. Relaxation as a smooth love song silently eased through the speakers of the car and played with the ends of their hair. _Relaxed_.

Neither of them were relaxed.

Billy sat on the edge of his seat, tapping an anxious tune into his steering wheel while Steve slid all the way back in his in fear he might block the other's view. The black interior of his car clashed with the shades of emerald coating everything they passed, the Camaro gradually getting hotter and hotter while they sat in discomfort, unable to tell if it came from the beams of the sun beating down on them or the metaphysical barrier separating them both. Steve wanted to say something, but couldn’t bring himself to do it. A complicated feeling bubbled in his chest as a thousand different outcomes flashed through his mind. Doubt’s grimy fingers were on his shoulder, hell, it was clawing at both of them, but were they going to verbally acknowledge it? 

No, they weren’t.

Well, not yet.

Billy eyed down the parking spots that were in front of Dachshunds, continuing to make a rhythm with his thumb as he pulled into one of them and put the car in park. They didn’t look at one another at first. They stared into their reflections plastered on the storefronts windows until Billy shut the car off and the low purr of the engine and white noise of the air conditioner all came to a stop. Steve broke the barrier of silence between them, the first to speak out loud in an attempt to kill the awkwardness that possessed them.

“What are you thinking about getting?”

Billy tore his attention away from the windows to look at Steve, he cleared his throat before letting out a half-hearted laugh. “That depends. I don’t have a record player so if they have cassettes then I’ll consider actually getting something.”

Steve furrowed his brows, “Oh, I thought you had one. Sorry.”

“Don’t apologize.” Billy paused, starting to look off again. “So, are we going to get out, or?”

“Oh- yeah, sorry.”

Steve practically launched himself out of the car with how expeditiously he got out, Billy, on the other hand, got out smoothly, brushing a few stray hairs from his face as he shut the door and instantly went into a laughing fit.

“Oh, look it’s Melvin’s!”

“Melvin’s-?” Steve cocked a brow until he realized what the other was referring to. The sign stood proud as it sprawled itself across the entirety of the store's front listing in giant letters, ‘Melvalds General Store’. He rolled his eyes with a huff, “Oh, haha wow you’re so funny, Hargrove.”

“I told you it wasn’t Melvin’s.”

“You didn’t say it was shit!” Steve rebutted.

“I told you that I didn’t think it was called Melvin’s, but you insisted it was Harrington! ‘Yeah it is, I know it is!’” Billy mocked the other with a chuckle.

Steve rolled his eyes again, getting a small nudge from Billy to reassure he was only teasing, but even after all of that, it felt awkward again. It felt awkward during the party, staying the night at Steve’s house, coming to the Wheeler’s, driving here, it all somehow gradually filled to the brim with an uncomfortable ooze which shrieked at them to stay in their helpless and unpleasant places when they tried to break the seal to their barrier.

Billy held the door open for the other, watching as Steve glided into the store with his hands hitching the front pockets of his jeans. The jingle of bells on the glass door came to a _clank_ as the door shut behind them, the only noises being the indistinct sound of a song swirling on a record player that wasn’t in sight and the roaring of their breath. Neither of them could decipher the lyrics but the tune they found to be awfully familiar. 

Olive green painted the walls they were confined in and chartreuse danced as little accents on the boxes records and cassettes took a stand-in. Steve turned to Billy, watching curiosity take hold of his ocean blue eyes as they dashed from one place to the next, eventually dragging his attention to Steve who hadn’t moved, well, neither of them moved. They locked eyes, waiting for the other to do something until someone else came in behind them as if to tell them to actually do something. 

**_. · . · . ·_ **

Max knocked on the Byer’s front door with her skateboard in hand, tapping an anxious tune with her foot as she waited for someone to answer the door. She couldn’t drive or get a ride so going here was the best option for her to meet up with the others, mainly because she was the closest to Will’s house than the others and all she had was the skateboard. No big deal though, it could’ve been pouring down rain or hot enough to roast her alive, but thankfully it wasn’t. The only problem arose when the road surface rapidly switched from asphalt to gravel and she took a pretty hard fall hand first into rocks and what could’ve been glass… so there were a few cuts on her hand. No big deal though, she knows Will will have something for her wounds. She knew he had some bandages after she was teaching him to skate and he did the exact same thing. She held her palm to her mouth in an effort to keep the blood from ruining her clothes, lapping over the cuts with the taste of iron tainting her mouth. Max flinched as she knocked on the door again with her stained hand and brought it back before muttering a curse.

Will opened the door after a few clicks, an apologetic gleam in his eyes as his mouth opened to speak but stopped when he began to note what happened. “Did you fall?”

Max smiled, pulling her hand away revealing the faint coating of burgundy on her lips, “Yeah. But I’m fine, just gotta wrap it.”

Will smiled back as he turned away and ran off into another room allowing Max to walk inside and leave her skateboard next to the front door. She let out another curse, making her way into the living room, instantaneously being greeted by Lucas.

“Hey- Woah! Max, hey, are you okay?”

Max let out a half-hearted giggle, “I just fell, Lucas. I’m perfectly fine- just bleeding.”

Lucas furrowed his brows, eyes darting between her bloody hand and jade irises with concern. 

“I’ve got the stuff!” Will hurried into the room, cotton balls falling out of grip before he could even put everything on a nearby chair, pulling the bandages from the mountain of cotton and turning to Max. 

A voice called out from the other side of the room, a cocked brow illustrating his confusion, “What happened?” Mike stood up from where he sat with Eleven following close behind him as they investigated. “Oh, woah. What did you do?”

“I fell,” Max explained, holding her palm out to Will for his help. He didn’t hesitate to start pressing the cotton into her palm, a hiss passing her lips after he put a little too much pressure on it and in return, an apologetic hum came from Will. 

“Aren’t you supposed to disinfect a cut before you wrap it?” Lucas inquired. 

Max forced out an answer, “I will when I get home, it’s fine.” 

Will hesitantly continued to wrap her hand, “Are you sure? I didn’t think about cleaning it.”

“Yeah, I’m sure. It’ll be okay.” 

Eventually, Will left the room to put everything up, leaving the rest of them to sit on the carpet around the coffee table that stood proudly as they turned on the radio and played with the dials. Eleven sat in front of it, eyebrows folding as she watched them fiddle with the buttons and argue with one another about which direction they needed to go. Her eyes flicked up to Dustin as he stood up. “Are you sure we should do this?”

All of them turned to her, blinking a few times before anyone spoke up and Will came back into the room. “I think we _need_ to. There is no way anything good can come from Billy, especially when Steve is involved.” Dustin replied.

Lucas looked at Max, “Did Billy say anything about it?”

“About today?”

“Yeah.”

“I asked him about it, I asked what they were talking about and he told me they were going to have some ‘personal time’ together. He didn’t go into what ‘personal time’ was, but that’s just how he is.”

“That’s really vague,” Will added.

“That’s what I told him! But he didn’t say anything after that.”

Everyone exchanged stares between one another, all seemingly silently agreeing on moving forward with the plan. Will held out a tattered green bandana to Eleven as they watched in the roaring quiet they encased themselves in, all waiting for her to proceed and put everything in action. She hesitantly took the rag, playing with the torn hem as her fingers slid down to the corners and blacked out her vision.

**_. · . · . ·_ **

Billy sighed before searching through another stack of cassettes, skimming over the familiar and unfamiliar names listed on each one as a sense of frustration soared through his body. Most of them he never heard before, others he had but didn’t want to bother trying to listen to, then there was the one percent he listened to, but they hadn’t released any new music. Steve lost interest in the miscellaneous section of vinyl, all of which were just rugged and scratched versions of ones and a quarter of the price they would normally go for. A sigh passed his lips as he moved away from the section and caught Billy in his sight, almost instantly noticing the look of distress covering his being. He hesitated walking over to him, but then he hated the fact he hesitated.

That hesitation, it’s part of their fear. The fear of the unknown, the inability to empathize, and the evitable. The hesitation, a part of an attempt to walk on glass around one another and not act towards fighting the monster that was the barrier. He took a step forward, and then another came to push him forward until he stood next to Billy, watching the way his hands cycled through the pieces of plastic until he suddenly stopped. 

Billy turned to him, a lump made its way up into Steve’s throat with a plan full of destruction. “You look frustrated,” Steve spurted out, eyes darting around the others face to look for any changes to show some sort of harsh reality to him about how this all wasn’t going to work out, but nothing popped up.

Billy let out a half-hearted chuckle, putting the cassettes down into the box. “That’s because I am, pretty boy.”

Steve mentally let out a sigh of relief, he chewed at his cheeks as he watched the other face him again. “Why?”

Billy gave a good laugh, his grin large enough to force his eyes to shut ever so slightly. “Why am I frustrated? Is that what you’re asking ‘why’ about?” 

Red flushed Steve’s cheeks, “Yeah! What else would I be asking ‘why’ about?”

“I don’t know, that’s why I was asking you!” Billy chuckled again, keeping note of the shade of embarrassment swaying on the other’s face. The grin was slipping from his lips as they remained silent, but Steve wasn’t going to let hesitation try and take them. 

“What kind of rock do you like?”

Billy cocked a brow, “Do you want an answer to your first question- eh actually I’ll answer both right now. I’m frustrated because I can’t find anything I like, and I like anything that isn’t soft or old rock. That answer your questions?”

Steve let out a chuckle, “Yeah I mean, it does, you answered them.” Billy rolled his eyes. “These all look like metal cassettes though.”  
  
“Just because they’re all metal bands doesn’t mean I like them, dipshit.” Steve rolled his eyes. 

“Then which metal bands do you like?”

“Metallica, Iron Maiden, Van Halen, a little bit of Def Leppard. I haven’t really been able to explore other shit mainly because some of it is just shit.” A half-hearted laugh. “I also just like stuff I can relate to, ya know?”

Steve slowly nodded, the ghost of a smile crossing him. “I get that, I get that.” Billy began to go back to the cassettes, fiddling with the grooved edges of their cases and leaning on the counter as he waited for Steve to say something or go on his own merry little way back to the vinyl. “What do you like about Metallica?”

Billy looked back up to him with brows knitted as if to insult the question without even saying a word. He stood straight up as he pondered a response, the harsh expression melting off his face as he searched for the right answer, an answer that had some sort of meaning behind it. One that actually had some truth behind it. Billy forced a smile, “It’s an escapism,” he paused, the smile disappeared, “a bittersweet getaway from Hawkins for a few minutes.”

Steve faintly smiled in an attempt to show the other he understood, Billy flashed an appreciative one back but his eyes kept the sorrow. “What do you like to listen to?”

Steve chuckled, “Not the same stuff as you, not because I don’t like it, I just don’t have any rock vinyls.” Billy playfully scoffed, laughing as Steve rolled his eyes and crossed his arms which soon unraveled to grab a cassette from another box and stare at it’s the paper cover.

“10cc is one of my personal favorites.” Steve flipped the piece of plastic to reveal the art on the other side, holding it out to Billy for him to inspect it. 

“10cc,” Billy paused in thought, flipped it to the back, “aren’t they a 70’s band?”

“I mean, as far as I know, they’re still making music. I couldn’t tell you what their latest album is though. I don’t really keep up with bands. I just like a lot of 70’s stuff my parents listened to when they were younger.” 

“That sucks,” Billy looked up from the cassette, taking in each and every feature of the others' faces as he asked, “Why do you like them though?”

“What do you mean?” Steve inquired, brows furrowed leaving Billy to laugh at the nonsense of an expression wiped his face.

“You asked me why I liked Metallica, Harrington. So, why do you like 10cc?” Now it was Steve’s turn to ponder. To think. To question. Billy had a dark reason behind why he liked what he liked, to put it as simply as possible, the music took its place as Hargrove's coping mechanism for what he went through on a daily basis. But, Steve- Steve didn’t have troubles like that, sure they were also parental ones but nothing to the extreme the other had to deal with. 

“I guess I kind of grew up listening to them, my parents have one of their albums, but I’ve bought a few of my own. But I think it’s kind of cool, ya know? You have this idea of what songs mean as a kid but when you grow up it kind of turns into something else.”

Billy expected some dumbass answer from the other, but it wasn’t one. His smirk faded to a side smile before questioning him. “‘Something else’?”

“It’s an idea. Your ideas change as you start to experience things. You learn what it’s really like to be out in the world, what you have to go through to accept others, what love becomes after you get hurt from it. It all changes with time.”

“Your experiences change you,” Billy added.  
  
“For the better, or for the worse.” Steve faintly smiled. “But sometimes people don’t let you have a choice when it comes to that, so you have to take hold of those experiences and decide what you want to define you.”

**_. · . · . ·_ **

"What do you see?" Mike asked, staring at Eleven. They all stared at her with a yearning to see what she was seeing, to see if Steve was actually alive and okay or if they were going to have to go on a secret mission to go save him.

The void highlighted what she had been looking for, encasing the world in darkness while Steve stood there illuminated and talking, his voice bouncing around and echoing through her ears. Eleven tread closer to him, his voice gradually becoming more clear as she went from yards to feet away from him, listening in on a conversation marching close to its death. 

“I see him. . . Steve.”

Max pondered the next obvious question but hesitated to ask it. “Is Billy with him? Is he there?”

As she took in Steve, Billy soon faded into existence within the dark. She had never been properly introduced to Max’s brother and when considering the stories of his violence and fury she heard, it came as no surprise. Steve prevented that from happening, she was aware, but when he came over to the Wheeler’s to pick up Max, Steve didn’t seem bothered. Maybe doing this would tell her why. Being here in the void made her notice how their voices contrasted with one another. Billy had a honeyed voice and way of speaking, almost as if his life goal was to flatter every person he met but bite them in the ass later on. Maybe she thought that because all she heard about him was terrible, but Steve, on the other hand, had a more calm, silvery voice that could boom if he wanted it to but as an empty threat. At first, she figured they were someplace alone, but the cassette in Billy’s hand said otherwise.

“Yes.”

“Is he dead?” Dustin spurted out.

Lucas nudged him, “Shut up, Dustin! Of course, he isn’t. . . is he?” Mike knitted his brows and glared at them, putting his finger to his lips while Max hushed them in demand they shut up.

“No.”

Mike brought his attention back to Eleven. “What are they doing?”

Billy put the cassette somewhere, it disappearing like he did a magic trick the second he let go of it. Anticipation bubbled in her chest as they stood silently for a second, one motioning they leave while the other followed along and so did she. The pieces of the puzzle were a jumbled mess she wanted to figure out, she wanted to put it together, but in order to do it she needed answers. She needed to know more. Soon they began to grab onto things, confusion playing with her as Billy’s car came into view and revealing they got inside. 

“They. . . they got into Billy’s car, they’re. . ..” Eleven halted her words as Steve shot the starting gun for their next conversation. “Talking.”

“About what?” Mike whispered.

“Themselves, they’re talking about. . .” she responded, hurrying to the car to get the story.

 _“At the party, after everything we said, why did you push everything off?”_ Steve asked.

Billy didn’t answer at first, he seemed to be thinking about what was coming. Thinking back to this ‘party’. _“. . .Are you talking about how I stopped crying and we got in the car?”_

Steve bit his lip, _“Yeah.”_

Billy hesitated once again, looking to Steve. _“I didn’t want to let you know I still had some tears left in me. I really didn't want anyone to see us like that, to be honest with ya.”_ _  
_

_“Two mortal enemies crying and screaming at one another? That’s a recipe for a disaster.”_

_“I honestly don’t know what I would’ve done if someone would’ve found us like that.”_ Billy shook his head as he waited for the other to input.

_“I would’ve faked the fight.”_

Billy let out a half-hearted laugh, _“You’re implying it would’ve gone that far? I would’ve beaten everyone's asses who came over there to encourage some dumbass shit like that.”_ He paused, leaning against his steering wheel before looking over the other, observing the other. _“You would’ve faked it?”_

 _“Yeah. I don’t want to fight you. And, I hope you don’t want to fight me either.”_ Steve responded as he fiddled with the hem of his shirt.

_“I don’t want to fight you. But, what are we?”_

_“What do you mean?”_

_“Are we friends?”_ Billy smacked his palm against the steering wheel before looking away from Steve. _“What are we?”_

_“Friends.”_

_“Seriously? You’re serious, we’re friends?”_

_“Yes.”_

Eleven ripped off the blindfold, rubbing away at the blood dripping from her nose as she resettled back into reality and everyone crowded around to hear what happened. After a few deep breaths, she looked up to all of them and swiped at her nose again. “They’re friends now. They don’t want to fight one another.”

“What!?” they all said consecutively.

Dustin popped another question, “When did this happen? How is that even possible?”

Eleven blinked, slightly shaking her head as she spoke as she tried to piece the puzzle together. “Steve said something about them crying at a party.”

Max scoffed, “Billy crying?”

“Why would El lie about that though? Surely it must’ve happened if Steve brought it up and Billy didn’t reprimand him for it.” Mike spoke up.

“Steve doesn’t go to parties anymore, we know that.” Lucas shook his head before turning to Dustin, “Did you know about a party?”

“I mean, Steve told me he was going to one for graduation but I didn’t think that happened!”

**_. · . · . ·_ **

Billy bit his lip. The conversation continued while Eleven vanished only to leave some information out of the troubling puzzle the kids were trying to bunch together. A sigh emitted from Billy as he tapped his thumb against the wheel, his free hand there to gesture and act with his words while he spoke. “I’m. . . I’m trying to do better. Trying to get myself to warm up to you so all of this tension can fade away. There’s like this wall between us and I don’t know if you can feel it, but I can.” Silence took the reins and wrapped it around their throats in laughter. It mocked them. It belittled them for not being able to overpower the awkwardness, not being able to understand one another. It got a hold of Billy first where regretful thoughts began to bubble in his mind and force him to physically recoil and press his forehead into his steering wheel, tears threatening to rain down. “I’m sorry, I guess I don’t know what I’m-”

“No,” Steve paused, “I know what you’re talking about. . . I can feel it too.” They both wanted this to work, that was undeniable, but the question remained of how. Steve thought back to where he hesitated, how he hated how he hesitated, how he knew breaking it would lead to them being able to rip apart the barrier and send it crashing. He opened his mouth to speak, but Billy had been running through his thoughts on a raging path as well. 

Billy half-heartedly laughed as he picked up his head from the steering wheel and let out a loud sniff. His eyes sparkled like the surface of the ocean blue on a sun-filled day as they watered, he turned to the other, occasionally looking at him and somewhere else as he spoke. “You mentioned earlier, that ideas all change with time. That our experiences alter what we go through to accept others. And maybe you didn’t mean it in this way, but when I listened to you, I thought of it as a hurdle. Our past experiences with one another are undeniably terrible, I treated you like a steaming pile of dog shit and you had every right to tell me to fuck off at the party after I went on that mile long apology... But you didn’t. I haven’t opened up to you anymore because I guess I’m just afraid, but I can’t just fucking do that because _I want to help you. I want to help you understand me_.” 

Steve took in the emotions flowing through Billy's words, he could tell the other felt frustration with expressing himself and getting the words out to describe how he felt. They confirmed they were both friends earlier, and now it was time to fuck up the barrier. 

“I didn’t expect you to open up to me all at once, especially with the shit you’ve been through. No one should expect you to open up instantly. Building relationships with anyone takes time and growth and we know we’re friends now- we’ve got that checked off in our minds, but now we’ve gotta develop it! We can shatter the barrier, but we have to do it together.”

Billy sniffed again, a grin spreading across his face as he stared at the other and took in the emotions Steve shoved in his words. “How do you propose we break the barrier?”

“By,” Steve paused, shifting his entire body to face the other with a grin mirroring Billy’s, “We can do it by showing the kids that you aren’t a threat. When we do, we can hang out more and you don’t have to worry about Max. Open ourselves up over time. Break the barrier.” Billy nodded along to Steve’s plan, he licked his teeth and held his tongue between them, slightly opening his mouth to add his own part to the plan, but Steve interrupted with something the other didn’t expect.

“No matter what people see you as or say you are, Hargrove, you aren’t a monster. . . you’re just broken. _You’re human._ ” A shade of red tinted the apples of Billy’s cheeks and spread from there to the rest of his face like a rampant fire taking off over dry decomposing dead leaves and grass. Billy lost his words, he couldn’t even remember what he was going to say beforehand.

“I-” he started before breaking out into a bashful deep chuckle in an attempt to hide the change in color on his face from the other. Steve seemed to pick up on this and the fire slammed itself into his face as well, the same laugh resonating from him. Billy cleared his throat, “Thanks, pretty boy. But for future reference, just call me Billy. There’s no need to call me by my last name, we aren’t coworkers, or _enemies_ .”

“Yeah, no shit.” Another laugh.

Billy cocked a brow as a smirk sneakily snuck into his smile. “You ready to go home?”

**_. · . · . ·_ **

Billy drove home after dropping off the other back at his place and speeding to get back home with the ghost of a smile drawn on his lips. He actually missed Steve’s presence, he wanted to hang out for longer but they could do it next time when Neil and Susan didn’t have any plans and he could afford to not be home. His radio screamed out the intro of a soft rock song through the speakers as he pulled up to their mailbox and came to a stop. He took a deep breath before switching off the engine and listening to it all die out. He didn’t have any words to describe today, well, he had one and it was frustration, but that was to describe his inner feelings shrieking in a choreographed dance with his demons. He smacked his palm against his steering wheel as he took another breath and laughed before finally getting out of his car and making his way inside the house. Excitement wiggled on his mind as he thought about the next time he and Steve would be out on the town together causing some havoc, even if in reality it really wasn’t that. 

He had a grin painted on him as he strode through the house knowing that he had a few hours to himself. Well, actually he wasn’t by himself. Max should be in her room. His stride soon came to a stop when he began to question her presence. There had been times in the past where she had dipped while he had left and didn’t come back until minutes before Neil and Susan had gotten back, but she didn’t listen to him. He stopped in front of her door, ears on the hunt for a sign of her being in her room. Just one sign. He couldn’t hear anything. 

Billy stood in front of her door, his heart pounding against his ribcage, raising his fist to knock before it opened on the other side. Max went still, her eyes wide as they deadlocked with the others in an unsettling dance of death. Just staring. She went to open her mouth to speak but noted how his eyes drifted down to her hand and brows furrowed. Fear took hold of her as his stare shot back up to greet hers again, dread spread through her body as she waited for venom. . . but nothing came to bite. Nothing came to throw her to the ground and go in for the kill. 

He held his hand out for Max, remaining completely silent as she contemplated complying. There might not have been any spiteful words to kickstart an argument, but that didn’t mean that there wasn’t going to be any to join them later. She cocked a brow as she hesitantly placed his hand into his, expecting only the worst from the other as he looked down at it.

Billy subconsciously bit his lip as his thumb drew across the bandages in a careful manner. “Max,” he whispered, flipping her hand over to see the other side. “Were you going to show this to me? Were you going to tell me about this?”

Max sharply inhaled, her voice quivering. “No.”

Billy staidly hummed as he continued to inspect the wraps, eventually bringing his stare to hers. “Max, who wrapped this?”

“I did.”

“No,” a frown tweaked at his lips in disappointment, “I know you didn’t because we ran out of wraps yesterday when I worked out. Whose house did you go to?”

Fear held the key to her lips as she glared at him. A scoff attempting to force itself past her lips, but the concern painted on Billy’s face shoved it down her throat. 

“Max, answer me.”

“I went to Will’s. I skated. I fell.”

Billy blinked, his attention fading back to her hand. “Did you disinfect it?”

“No.”

“Go to the bathroom.”

Max cautiously made her way to the bathroom, sitting on the edge of the tub as she waited. She now knew her brother and Steve were friends, but how? Did he knock his lights out and settle their disputes? Confusion and anxiety took the form of tapping her foot against the tile and listening to how it echoed along with the unsettling anticipation laced itself in the air. Her eyes darted to the doorway as Billy appeared with wraps in hand. 

Her brows furrowed, “You told me there weren’t any bandages.”

Billy glared right back at her. “I keep these in my room. . . for when I need them. “

Max’s expression softened as she looked away from him, holding out her hand for him to handle. “Stand up, we need to clean it. Put your hand over the sink.” A huff bounced off the tiles as she stood up, continuing to look away as she held out her arm over the sink and kept her expectations at their worst, but she didn’t expect Billy to remain so unusually calm. She didn’t expect Billy to gently unwrap her bandages, she didn’t expect him to give her a whisper of a warning before he cleaned it, she didn’t expect him to be. . . humane with her. She only expected pain, but the pain never came to say hello.

“Hey,” Billy whispered.

Max slowly turned to him, a blank expression plastered on her face. Emotions swirled in her chest, a concoction reaching its boiling point as she noted the bizarre changes in Billy. She couldn’t pinpoint the exact feeling to describe what she witnessed. The irrational yelling, harsh grabbing, insulting words they would exchange between one another weren’t there. They disappeared. She was at a loss for words as they stared at one another, a faint smile entangling itself in his lips.

“Just tell mom you fell in the ditch.” He paused, noting how worry painted her face. “I’ll back you up. I’m here for you.”

Max blinked, remaining silent. Steve must have done something to Billy to get them to be friends, and whatever it was, she was on the fence about it. Them ‘hanging out’ today was weird. All of this was weird. _Really weird_. “Thank you,” she mumbled, eyes darting to avoid eye contact.

“You’re welcome,” Billy mumbled back, his eyes doing the same song and dance. He faintly smiled at her before trying to leave the bathroom and go into his room, but Max spoke up

“How was you and Steve’s stuff?” She asked. She knew he had no clue about the abilities that Eleven possessed and the fact she knew that he and Steve became friends, or that Billy cried. She couldn’t just expose anything out of the blue without getting a bewildered reaction out of it, so she tried to remain blissfully ignorant with her mouth.

Billy didn’t know what to respond with at first, he debated if he should tell her that he and Steve were friends, again unknowing of the information Max held. He decided against it. “It was good, we didn’t do much. How was your time at Will’s?”

Max didn’t know what to respond with at first either, she had concluded earlier on within the war of thoughts her mind fought that revealing anything to him was simply a certified death wish. “It was good.”

“Good.”

The fun had ended for the day, questions manifested even more as the kids learned new information about their honorary dad and what they thought to be his worst enemy. Sure, they found that they were friends, but what happened to lead up to that moment? What caused them to cry and scream at a party?


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Billy faintly smiled, unexpecting of the venom soon to come. "Where y'parents at?" 
> 
> Steve continued to glare at him, hurt toying with his voice. "Somewhere for work. They didn't tell me where, just left the house without saying goodbye, but were thoughtful enough to leave a note on the counter." He shifted his position to where he laid on his back, staring up at the eggshell white ceiling and watching as his mind created creatures out of the patterns carved into it. The blue ambiance changed their shapes as shadows from outside twisted the patterns until all Steve could see was downturned smiles on distorted faces. His expression soon followed as it slightly relaxed and that familiar lost feeling from earlier began to seethe and prick the corners of his eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I want to apologize for making all of you wait for another chapter. When quarantine came I still had an insane amount of work to do for school and wasn't able to find space to write. I was planning on adding a filler chapter before this one but then decided that it wouldn't be appropriate and I also lost motivation for the chapter entirely so I decided to omit it and bring up the content in a future chapter. I hope you all have been staying safe and also standing up for what's right. 
> 
> Black Lives Matter.

**_June 4th, 1985_ **

**_Indigo_ **

**_Five Days Later_ **

_BANG BANG BANG_

Steve jerked up from the bed with eyes wide as they shot to his bedroom window. Billy leaned against the window with cupped hands to peer inside, a grin snaking its way onto his lips when he spotted the other and waved. He quickly rolled his eyes before rushing to the window to unhook the latch and slide it open.

"What the _fuck_ are you doing?" Steve hissed.

Billy lowly chuckled, tongue dragging over his teeth. "You told me if I ever needed a place to stay that I could come over, so here I am."

Steve blinked, Billy would've had to scale up the side of the house and it's not like there's a ladder up to his window. He had no clue as to how Billy got up here let alone where he would've climbed to get there in the first place. He shook his head, "Why didn't you just ring the doorbell?”

"I didn't want to wake up your parents-"

" _They're not here_."

Billy threw his legs over the edge of the window sill and slid inside. "You never told me they weren't." Steve just stood there and glared at him. "I didn't wake you up, did I?"

"No, but- I-" He sighed, allowing his fingers to rub at his eyes in an active attempt to try and cover their bleariness. "I'm _tired_." Steve shifted away from him, moving to the free carpet next to his bed and sitting down with a plop. Billy followed. Steve continued to touch his eyes, catching glimpses of a backlit Billy through obscured vision and a flustered mind. "What do you want to talk about?"

"What do I want to talk about? You're not going to say hi first, pretty boy?" Billy asked in a low, teasing voice.

Steve knitted his brows and grumbled. "Hi." Billy lightly chuckled, Steve could hear the tongue trapped in between the others teeth. Another eye roll.

Billy slid off his leather jacket and chucked it across the room. The other didn't bother to look to where it may have miraculously landed, all of his attention remained on Billy. Billy as his smug little smile slid right off his face. Billy as he caught Steve staring at him but didn't bother to tell him to stop despite knowing that silence was perched on the window sill, he just stared back. They both stared. 

An ocean of darkness colored the walls indigo while the moonlight painted them a tinge of grey, their faces changing in tone as the shadows of tree branches and clouds decorated them with navy and prussian. 

Billy faintly smiled, unexpecting of the venom soon to come. "Where y'parents at?" 

Steve continued to glare at him, hurt toying with his voice. "Somewhere for work. They didn't tell me where, just left the house without saying goodbye, but were thoughtful enough to leave a note on the counter." He shifted his position to where he laid on his back, staring up at the eggshell white ceiling and watching as his mind created creatures out of the patterns carved into it. The blue ambiance changed their shapes as shadows from outside twisted the patterns until all Steve could see was downturned smiles on distorted faces. His expression soon followed as it slightly relaxed and that familiar lost feeling from earlier began to seethe and prick the corners of his eyes.

Billy bit his lip, guilt bubbling in his chest and regret fiddling with his question. He moved from his spot by the window and laid on the floor with Steve. 

He didn't come over to pour his heart out to Steve about his problems, he wanted to talk to his friend, make sure everything was running smoothly, find out if he needed to knock someone's lights out for him, but that was only after hanging out with Tommy Hagan twenty minutes earlier. Originally, they had both planned to hotbox his basement and laugh the night away while talking about god knows what until the other brought Steve up - and once they started talking about him, they couldn’t stop. Billy had a thousand questions regarding him, and Tommy had a thousand long answers to those questions. Hours had flown by and Billy didn’t take a hit, he couldn’t. His stomach got tied in knots and his heart made him queasy talking about Steve like he was fretful about something.

But there wasn’t a reason to be fretful. _It was just Steve_.

Tommy had gone on about how they had met, their adventures through school, how Steve usually came over for dinner, little things that he remembered, and then ended with how they both fell out of touch. He talked about the fight with Jonathan, how soft that Steve had gotten, and how he wasn’t surprised how him and Nancy broke up. Billy knew Tommy was trying to play it cool and act like he didn’t care that they were friends anymore, but he could tell that he was hurt about it. Tommy brought up a few negative things about the other every once in a while, however, all of them were left off on a solemn note rather than a sour one. They obviously weren’t enemies. They were friends that lost their spark and don’t know how to reignite it.

Tommy had alluded to Steve having a broken household when he brought up how he would typically come home with him and eat dinner with his family, which happened to be just his mom but even that helped Steve cope with the situation. 

Billy didn’t know that Steve had issues, or at least he liked to think he didn’t when he obviously did. Envy got in the way of him considering that Steve faced anything remotely damaging, especially when they still had knives to each other’s throats. It was better to not think, to switch off and go into auto-pilot when tormenting others, to not consider that they could very well be dealing with the same exact trauma that he did at home, to listen to the rumors that went around and think that a rich boy living in a remote town in Indiana had nothing to worry about when mommy and daddy could pave his success with a little bit of encouragement from a stack of hundreds. It was easy to conform and bully, but it wasn’t to break the chain and show empathy. Fear played a key role in governing his actions, an inner fear that told him to hold up giant barriers and keep everyone out. If he kept everyone out then no one could hurt him, he wouldn’t have to worry about getting his heart torn to shreds. 

His finger began to trace shapes into the carpet, switching every so often between watching his movements and how Steve fought in a staring contest with the ceiling. His eyes flicked to Steve’s hands. They were tense, clawing at his arms and leaving little pink trails behind them. He went back to Steve's face, noting how his brows were tainted with pain and lip quivered as they laid there in silence. How Steve’s frown began to toy with Billy’s heartstrings in a way they hadn’t before. How Steve’s eyes began to glisten in the pale moonlight as it seeped in through the windows and exposed his tears to the other. 

Billy sat up, getting _real_ close to the other before hovering about a foot over his face to distract Steve. In no way is Billy an orator when it came to these kinds of situations, he doesn’t even remember if he’s ever comforted someone while they were upset like this. When Billy broke down during the party, so did a carefully constructed wall relying on suppressing emotions to stand tall. When he broke down in front of Steve, he didn’t mean to. It wasn’t his intention to burst out into tears. And he didn’t expect Steve to stop him when he tried to storm off, to grab on to his jacket and put him in his place, to tell him he understood. To be honest, all of it shocked him, and sure if Steve once held the title of ‘King’ and Billy ‘stole’ it from him then yeah he should’ve concluded that Steve bullied people the same way he did at one point. Sure, Steve had gotten ‘soft’, Tommy wouldn’t shut the fuck up about that, but this ‘soft’, being soft didn’t mean anything terrible. Being soft meant being compassionate, caring for others, showing some form of empathy instead of being an inconsiderable fuckhole. Billy liked soft, despite not being the kind of person that dared to show any form of softness. But for Steve? Maybe he could show his softness.

He just doesn’t know what to say to Steve, he’s afraid he’ll slip up and send him spiraling. But, he can _act,_ he knows how to do that.

Steve stared up at him, glossy eyes wide and lips parted in confusion. Billy’s pendant swung close to his face, his curly hair falling past his shoulders to add to the rapid palpitations of Steve’s heart as he laid frozen there. A blush sprouted in his cheeks, faint and settle in color until it spread to the rest of his face. 

And before he knew it, Billy shifted and picked him up. Steve let out a surprised yelp, his hands reaching up to grab onto Billy’s shoulders but put down before he could act. His royal blue comforter enveloped his body as it tried to calm him, but he didn’t want to be calmed, he didn’t want it to wipe away his tears this time. Steve jerked up from the comforter, eyebrows knitted and nose crinkled in a flustered rage. His mouth opened to say something spiteful, something full of resentment, but the other shut it for him.

“Talk,” Billy demanded. His weight formed a divot in the bed as he sat down in front of Steve, mirroring the same aggravated expression. Steve stayed quiet despite Billy’s wishes, but after a while, he crumbled and fell apart. His eyebrows lost all their fury, lips parting again but only to let out a shaky breath, eyes beading with tears, hands covering his face and cursing into his palms as if he were telling them little secrets. A choked sob broke from behind his hands, one that drove a harpoon right through Hargrove’s heart. 

Steve shuddered, mumbling something incoherent under his cries.

“I don’t know what I’m doing wrong!” Steve wept.

“You’re not doing anything wrong, Steve.” 

“But they’re never here!” Steve’s voice crumbled underneath him as he tore his hands from his face revealing the water-bound eyes and flushed cheeks hidden behind them. “They’re never here- I don’t know why!” His throat tightened as he tried to hold back another broken sob that managed to wiggle its way out. He shuddered again, trying to hide his face from the other.

“Them being here isn’t in your control.” Billy cooed. His heart pounded in his chest and his mind raced, thousands of thoughts pouring over the flood gates as he tried to use the right words to construct the right sentences. “Hell, there’s a lot of things that aren’t in our control Steve, but how they show their appreciation is fully up to them. Of which they don’t care to show you enough of.”

Billy continued to watch, his lip slightly trembling. He doesn’t know if it helps the other to hear something so blunt especially in such a fragile state of mind. The fear piled up again, he doesn’t know how to act now. He doesn’t know if he can say anything to help Steve cope. He could’ve just said the worst possible thing in a situation like this, but he doesn’t know. “I don’t know if you want me to stay, I think I should go. If Neil-” Steve latched onto Billy’s wrist, holding it tightly with panic shaking his body to send Billy’s head spinning around to face the other in confusion.

“Please don’t leave!” Steve cried. They froze in place, both sets of eyes wide in shock as silence overcame them and tears rolled off of Steve’s rubescent cheeks. Billy’s arm felt like it had been set on fire and had gradually spread through the rest of his body in waves, a blush attacking his face as he stared at the other. Steve had pulled his hand away out of speechless dismay. He shuddered again, pricks of pain shooting through the corners of his eyes as he prepared to be yelled at like his parents would. To be screamed at and then left alone without any remorse.

Billy cleared his throat and rubbed at his wrist where Steve had grabbed on. Slowly, he took his attention away from it and sat next to the other on the bed. He faintly smiled despite fear wreaking havoc on his ribcage, he needed Steve to know that he’s going to be okay. _That he’s here for him, that he can help him_. “I’ll stay right here, but I’ll have to leave in the morning, _okay?_ ” 

The shaking began to settle after listening to Billy, a frantic look of dubiety sweeping his expression after he turned to him and took a long sniff in an attempt to take control of himself. Steve used his arm to wipe away some tears before mumbling in response. “ _Okay_.” He reflected the small smile, but there was still something sizzling inside. Maybe it was the onslaught of happiness and safety he had been engulfed in by the others words, or maybe it was the dread tearing through him that he had acted so ‘inappropriately’ towards his friend. 

He sniffed again, conscious, rational thought being taken away by his emotions until his body reached its breaking point. Steve lunged towards Billy with arms spread and held on. He hugged the other as a choked cry ripped through his throat and tears began to put wet patches on Billy’s white button-up. 

Billy went rigid, his blush deepening in color and electricity flashing through his heart. His breathing became heavy and distorted as he began to take in what just happened. That was the last thing he had expected out of Steve. All the panic that was burning in his chest was suddenly replaced with a warm fuzzy feeling, all at once. A foreboding feeling spread through his body as he began to remember a time where he felt that. He knew what that sensation was, he knew very well what it was. His chest pounded as he tried to regain composure and push away his thoughts as they swarmed in to scream at him. He wrapped his arms around Steve and let him cry. He held him close and listened to the gasps and sniffs as they came out of him in sudden bursts. 

Billy could now remember when he had comforted someone, and it was his mom. He couldn’t remember the context of how it happened - most likely an abusive outburst from Niel - but he remembered that moment. How beautiful she was as tears trickled from her soft eyes, her fair hair tucked behind her ears and cheeks enflamed from weeping, and despite all of that there was a smile on her face. A broken laugh sounding out through a shattered woman as she assured her son that she was fine and embraced him with everlasting love. 

He tightened the hug, eyes glossy and shining in the light peaking through the window.

They both felt inadequate in their own ways, whether that be through their parents, relationships, or through the general judgment from society, they just felt indifferent. Like even if they tried to make it up to that they couldn’t because the latter half wouldn’t accept it or would rather use and abuse than look past it all. There was the question of what they would do if they were to go out on the town and someone were to spot them doing whatever and spread rumors. Would they act like enemies, or would they tell the truth? 

Neither of them want to fight. They’re friends, they know that. But should they really play it up?


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And when the deity had to leave, he pressed a bittersweet kiss to Billy's lips to lock his fate and let him know for sure that he, Billy Hargrove, was in fact falling in love.
> 
> But it wasn't just with anyone, oh no, it was with Steve _fucking_ Harrington.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Heyo! I just wanted to take this time to thank you all for the amazing support on Chapter Five! I know that I left for a while because of the workload that school put on me, but now that it's all over I am planning on putting a lot of focus into my writing before I have to go back. I am planning on uploading at least three more chapters before the end of this month, some of which will be short and others, long. We are already at Chapter Six and I am so excited to put out more for you guys to read and enjoy! I eventually want to do some digital art - especially for this chapter - depicting some of the scenes from Summer Tones that I personally whole-heartedly adore. But I digress, I hope you all love this chapter and are ready for an onslaught even more!
> 
> \- shleeps <3
> 
> BY THE WAY! TRIGGER WARNING! There are mentions of abuse and suicidal thoughts.

**_June 5th, 1985_ **

**_Amber_ **

**_The Next Day_ **

The front door latched shut with a quiet _click_ , silence rummaging about the house as the three left. Neil, Susan, and Max. Gone. Off to go do something together without their ‘son’ after he had made excuses as to why he couldn’t go out. But in reality, he just didn’t want to go out, especially if Neil came along.

Amber stretched across the hardwood floors in a subtle sway, shining through windows marked with drawn curtains and white blinds. Yellow accented the walls with its warm hue as the sun danced across Billy Hargrove’s face. He stared up at the ceiling, quietly waiting for the roar of Neil’s truck to break the silence and slowly disappear down the road. Eventually, the rumble came and went as the distant sounds of terrible memories and hate fled and allowed him to temporarily embrace safety. A few hours to himself to contemplate the night before and what Neil would have done to him this morning if he wasn’t back at the house before he woke up. 

Guilt toyed with his decision to leave without telling Steve goodbye, but he didn’t want to wake him up. Maybe he would reveal why he left the next time they met up, or maybe Steve would reveal the terrible shit that his parents have pulled in the past. . . or maybe they would pretend that the night never happened. 

Like Billy never managed to get up to Steve’s window and knocked on it, like Steve didn’t grab his wrist and cry into Billy’s button-up after hugging him, like they totally didn’t sleep in the same bed together and Steve cuddled up to Billy in his sleep.

Billy sat up from his bed, brushing back a few stray curls with his hand as his attention focused on his cassette player. He blinked. An urge spreading through him as he remained there, completely motionless, almost as if he were waiting for something to suddenly happen. As if him sitting there and thinking would cause the cassette player to start up.

He exhaled through his nose before standing and sluggishly moving towards the electronic box. Billy stared at it for a while, noting how the scratched chrome showed his vague reflection and the white glare of the sun made it seem as if he was glowing. He sat down in front of it, never taking his eyes off of the inorganic thing until he dragged his vision towards the several boxes of cassettes hidden catty-corner behind his mirror. 

He moved to all fours to reach it, sitting on his knees as he backed away with the container and opening it with hesitation. Inside laid several tapes, all twirling with the gold glow of the room as their colors popped against the black box. Carefully, he pulled one out. Billy stared at its cover, discomfort raking its nails down his back as the person on it seemingly stared right back at him. Like it was trying to pluck parts of his soul out of him through his eyes but reassure him that all will be alright. The title bolded in red above, ‘ _10cc The Original Soundtrack_ ’.

He pulled his legs from under himself, sitting with them spread rather than uncomfortably on them before pushing the button to open the player. Billy slid the cassette inside, a frown twisting at his lips. And with a quiet _click,_ he closed the little door and pressed play.

At first, the music swept him over softly. A faint pleasant tune providing him a sense of blissful ignorance and a way to ignore the hellscape thrashing about in his mind. But then it began to crumble. Bit by bit the barricades were ripped away allowing the music to turn sour and pound at his temples. Increasingly getting louder and louder until his eyes stung and lip quivered. A lump of self-hatred was caught in his throat, tightening the airway until he felt like he couldn’t breathe before he broke into a broken sob. His heart had drifted and burned a pit in the bottom of his stomach.

He didn't have a word - a phrase to describe what churned in his chest and prodded at his mind last night. The feeling was so familiar yet so out of his reach. Something rested its hands on his shoulders and whispered sweet little nothings about Steve into his ear. That something poured kerosene onto his skin and gave Steve the match to ignite it, to set his wrist on fire when he grabbed it and spread through the rest of his body in waves when he begged him to stay. The one that gave a devilish smirk behind Steve when he hugged him like he was never going to get to see him.

That something turned out to be Eros, and he in all of his grace had accompanied them under the pale moonlight, his wings engulfing them both with a sense of security that no one was going to interrupt this precious moment. And when the deity had to leave, he pressed a bittersweet kiss to Billy's lips to lock his fate and let him know for sure that he, Billy Hargrove, was in fact falling in love.

But it wasn't just with anyone, oh no, it was with Steve _fucking_ Harrington.

Billy stared at himself in the mirror, fear flooding his eyes as he combed his fingers through his hair and yanked. His chest felt like it had been set ablaze while the rest of his body tried to fight the sobbing and somehow turn his mind back off. 

He’s afraid, terrified. He let someone into his life, let them into his heart while simultaneously trying to keep it fully guarded. Steve had somehow made it past the barbed wire and bombs defending his mind, his emotions. . . him. His greatest fears danced around him and blurred his vision with every taunting step and scream as they kept reminding him of reality. How Neil wouldn’t hesitate to kill his _‘faggot’_ of a son, how Hawkins would gladly shun him despite also having feelings for women as well, how no one has any remote amount of respect and care for him in the whole world other than Tommy Hagan because. . . well, he and Tommy had done some things. _Confidential things_.

But, what about Steve? Steve, he wouldn’t abandon him, would he? 

Surely after everything they’ve done so far, all of the emotions that they’ve revealed and support they’ve given one another, surely Steve wouldn’t just leave him. Maybe he would just be uncomfortable. That or maybe he would never want to see him again.

But at the party, with what Steve had stated so calmly to him, like if it were a life long promise or pact that they would keep between one another. _That he’s here for him, that he can help him_.

Surely that wasn’t some stupid fucking lie that he said just to make him feel better. Surely the laughs, cries, and screams weren’t all a sick joke constructed against him. He tried to laugh through a cry, hum little bits of the song that was waging warfare with his thoughts, but it did nothing to ease the lump in his throat or the burning, stabbing, pain in his chest.

Emotional turmoil had been waiting for when the time was right to strike a jaded Billy Hargrove, almost as if it were a prophecy that he would’ve fallen for Steve and the flood gates would’ve busted open. Years of torment and abuse boiling down to self-hatred and fear that led to frustration and confusion. Billy questioned himself, especially after apologizing to Steve. He questioned if he should’ve gone to Steve’s last night, if it was alright to like both sexes, if it was alright _to be human_. All were stuck in the back of his mind and weren’t planning on leaving any time soon. Particularly the sexuality part, but also the human part, but mainly the sexuality part.

How the fuck is that even possible? To like both at once?

Billy shivered as he brought his knees into his chest, attempting to laugh again but only being met with more sobs. He didn’t want to have Neil’s ideals, he didn’t want to be anything like him. Every day felt like it was going to be his last, every time Neil yelled at him he felt like he was going to snap and then get killed for whatever bursts out of his mouth. Every time he got hit, he was reminded of his mother and how she left him without giving a reason why. He could imagine why she left, why she ran away from Neil, but not why she would leave Billy behind with _him_. There had been points where he had been covered with so many bruises that he couldn’t count them all, where he was afraid he was going to bleed to death out of his nose and mouth, where he had been fretful about crying himself to sleep because if Neil heard him he knew that he would come in there and ‘give him a reason to cry’. 

There were the contemplations about running away, escaping to another town and pursuing another life. Cutting all of his hair and changing his name, hoping that he could find some kind of peace and maybe even find his mother, wherever she may be. There were undoubted contemplations about death as well. The l'appel du vide that chanted his name while he sped down abandoned streets near the quarry at night, screeched when looking at his pocket knife, cheered when he got dangerously drunk at a party. The void calls for him at times, but he doesn’t respond to it. 

He doesn’t want to comply. He doesn’t want to give in to Neil and the abuse that has traumatized him.

 _But he has to give Steve credit for that_. 

Steve brings out something in him, something foreign that he can’t describe. Maybe. . . maybe it’s hope. The hope for a better life. The hope for someone to care. The hope for someone to. . . love him.

For Steve to love him.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It all started with a question.
> 
> _“Do you want to go get snow cones?”_
> 
> Max cocked a brow, bringing her attention from her comic book to Billy. He leaned on her door frame with a subtle frown drawn across his lips. “What?” she asked.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It is with unfortunate news that I announce that one of my dogs, Maureen, has lymphoma. We found out this morning when we took them to the vet for a checkup and did not expect this to happen. We don't know how long she has had it, or how long she will live, but we can only hope that her last moments are truly happy ones. I have never lost a pet where I was old enough to understand what had happened before, so this is extremely upsetting. I have always selfishly thought about how I wanted them to pass after I moved out, but that isn't how it works. Sometimes we can't hold on to our friends forever and we take them for granted while they're still here. I have to accept the fact that one day I won't get to see her tail wag anymore and that she'll be happier wherever she goes. I just hope that in another life she can bring the same happiness she brought me to another owner. 
> 
> I will give updates on her condition in my chapters until her passing, I hope I don't upset you guys by doing so.
> 
> I do not think the other chapters I planned on putting out his month will be drastically moved or put off, I tend to do Billy like things where I shove all my emotions down into a pit and once something happens then the stress of four months comes crashing into me all at once (which is NOT good for you and I'm aware of that). I'm thinking that these will help me stay happy and keep my mind off the negatives of the situation even though some of the few upcoming ones deal with abuse, I find that feeling upset helps me write these kinds of scenes and I cry along with the boys at times. I can only hope that I don't get strung up and I hope that I can reassure myself that it's okay to take a break from this. You guy's outstanding support helps me get motivated for writing these chapters and I want to thank you guys for that, sometimes it's hard with depression to even write. 
> 
> This chapter is going to be decently short, the next two are going to be medium-ish, and then the two after that are more than likely going to be 5000-8000+ each. Which is exciting! It's on a good note! 
> 
> But without further ado, please enjoy Violet. :)
> 
> \- shleeps

**_June 7th, 1985_ **

**_Violet_ **

**_Two Days Later_ **

It all started with a question.

_“Do you want to go get snow cones?”_

Max cocked a brow, bringing her attention from her comic book to Billy. He leaned on her door frame with a subtle frown drawn across his lips. “What?” she asked.

“Do you want to go get snow cones?” He repeated.

“Why? You don’t seem that excited to go.” She flipped to the next page with a sharp glare. 

Billy rolled his eyes, tongue pressed against teeth and lips twisting into a shark-like grin. “Sorry I’m not the most enthusiastic person, smartass. Just thought you would want to go do something.” His smile gradually faded into another frown as his eyes darted somewhere else. “Sorry.”

Max continued to stare at him, eyebrows folding at the strange, sudden change. Apologies were foreign little things, usually filled to the brim with spite after treating her like shit and Neil forcing him to say ‘sorry’. Billy just doesn’t say sorry without being threatened. In fact, Billy has never sincerely apologized for something that he’s said to her. _Weird_. 

“It’s okay?” She said it as if it were a question like she was unsure of Billy’s intentions, and well, that’s because she was. His eyes dragged themselves back up to hers, a forced faint smile taking position. This was weirder than the night she cut her hand, way more bizarre. And it wasn’t just the apology and the smile, it was that he had offered to do something together. Like he wanted to hang out with her. Like siblings would. 

Not to say that siblings always want to hang out with one another, but they don’t necessarily see eye to eye. They never have and it’s weird that only now Billy is becoming more accepting of her presence. She figured that he would actually see her as a sibling when he moved out, or maybe not. Maybe he would escape Hawkins and move somewhere far away from the small town and simply forget about any of their existences.

But what was even weirder to her was that all of this behavior began right after Steve and Billy supposedly apologized to one another and started to hang out. And Billy cried. She felt as if that was an extremely important detail from the beginning but almost like it wasn’t even true. Mike had made a good point about how ridiculous of a lie that would’ve been to come out of El’s mouth but there was something deep down inside that wanted to deny that. Maybe something sad had happened? She didn’t want to believe that Billy had just burst into tears right in front of Steve and the other followed suit. And the fighting thing. Did they fight at the party and then decide that they weren’t going to fight anymore? Or did they both mutually agree that it wasn’t okay? 

Max yearns to ask him or Steve about what happened that night, but then that would reveal that she knew about it. Steve would know that they practically used Eleven for their own profit (with good intentions to protect Steve of course), Billy, on the other hand, would definitely get defensive and throw a million demands to know how she found out about the party. He would probably get extremely flustered and scream at her, that or attack Steve because explaining how the party had made friends with a girl their age that has telepathic and otherworld-ish teleporting abilities was more than just a little complicated. Billy would think she had lost her mind let alone telling the truth. Steve would have to eventually explain everything to Billy, everything that has gone on in Hawkins that not only happened while they were there but also years before. Eleven, Will, the Upside Down, the Demdogs, the Demogorgon, and oh, let’s not forget about the Mind Flayer! 

She’s sure that he _TOTALLY_ won’t spontaneously combust from all of the information. 

“Do you want to go? They close in twenty minutes.”

Max snapped out of her inner monologue as she slowly came back to reality and set down her comic book. “Sure.”

“Go jump in the car, I’ll be there in a minute.”

. · . · . ·

Billy sat down on the gravel with a _crunch_ sounding beneath his jeans and the quick _chomp_ of snowcone resonating between Max’s teeth as she chewed. The sun began its descent beneath the skyline of pine trees and mountain ranges, turning the sky into a gradient starting with dark violet and ending in amber. Max turned to Billy, noting how the remaining sunshine painted their faces in a golden glow but was slowly fading as seconds continued to tick by. His button-up could pass as a lavender while they basked silently in the sun. Billy hooked his sunglasses to his shirt pocket before facing her and smacking his lips. 

“What did you get again?” 

“I got grape,” Max hummed, “what did you get?”

“Birthday cake.” He stared at her cone with a tinge of envy. A frown crossed his lips.

“Oh, that actually sounds pretty good.”

“Yeah, no. It’s worse than you think it is.” He grimaced at the ice before shaking it slightly. “It tastes like I just stuck my tongue in a bag of sugar, that or I just chugged sprinkles. It’s disgusting.” 

Max half-heartedly giggled at him. “Do you want some of mine?”

“No, I’m good. You can have this if you want it.” Billy held out the paper cone towards her, waiting patiently for Max to take it from him. 

“Can I throw it off the cliffside if I don’t like it?” She asked.

“Don’t throw the paper, just throw that fucking ice.” Max grabbed the cone gingerly, careful not to drop it and spill it all over the older. She hesitantly sniffed the ice and scrunched her nose in disgust.

“It smells like old lady.”

A soft, amused huff made it’s way out before Billy spoke, “It’ll probably kill everything in that damn water if you toss that syrup in there.”

She squinted her eyes at him. “Can stuff even live in that?”

Billy began to slowly descend back, allowing the gravel to caress his shoulder blades and his pendant to click against the buttons aligned on his shirt as he laid down. “I mean maybe frogs, I doubt fish could?” 

He stared up at the setting sky, taking in the shapes the clouds had formed into and analyzing each and every one of them. Billy admired the colors that danced among the darkness, the orange and purple that twirled with the navy and sang a summer tune, the wavelengths that cascaded across the sky and slowly died as the sun made the hills in the distance its grave. He listened as Max tossed the ice off the side of the cliff and it made a harsh _clash_ with the water below. He took a deep breath, nearing closing his eyes when Max asked a question that left his heart proudly thumping a way out of his chest.

“Are you and Steve. . . friends?”

Taken aback, Billy couldn't think of a single word to answer, not enough to adequately articulate the thousands of words flying past him. His chest tightened and he lost his words. He had gotten so busy trying to pull himself back together and glue sentences together that he had forgotten he even needed to respond. Max furrowed her brows, slightly turning around to see a spaced out Billy Hargrove staring into nothing.

“Bil-”

“Why do you ask?” He asked with eyes narrowed in suspicion.

“I mean, you don’t start work until Sunday and you’ve been out of the house quite a bit. You two also didn’t knock each other out when you came to pick me up that one night and Lucas was there.” She subconsciously chewed on her bottom lip, tapping a small rhythm into the gravel with her free thumb as she went to eat some more of her snow cone.

“Yeah, we’re friends,” Billy responded, after a moment. His focus zoomed off in another direction as he answered, as if remembering something or seemingly several things. 

Max stared at him, eyes darting every so often as thoughts came and went. So, El wasn’t lying, not that she thought she was, but hearing it from a primary source herself helped even though technically El had heard it from them as well and- They’re friends now, she understands that. Max blinked. That doesn’t answer the tens upon hundreds of other questions connecting to that and they will never be answered. She can’t ask him about the party, the apology or however they decided to makeup, the crying, the meet up at Dachshunds, or anything else they might’ve done these past few weeks that she nor the others know about. Not unless they could potentially talk to Steve about it. . . or they could just have El help them again.

Her head slightly tilted to the side. “What have you guys been even doing?”

“Just hanging out. Ya know, like you and your friends do. Except we can drive and you can’t.” Max rolled her eyes and stuck her tongue out at him, the gesture of which he returned right back at her. 

“You’re _SO_ funny, Billy Hargrove.” Her lips twisted into a sarcastic smile before pouring out the rest of her snowcone on the ground next to her. He loudly scoffed,

“Oh wow. Thanks, dipshit!” The shark grin had marked itself again. Billy brought himself back up into a sitting position, rubbing in particular areas of his back where the rocks had stabbed into his back. He stared at the trees and took them in. He noted how the colors had changed and swayed from something light to something darker. The red of the horizon was beginning to disappear and nothing but the ocean of midnight was racing to claim its conjoined throne in the sky, the moon following close behind it. 

He brought his attention down to focus on something other than the vast sea above, so he stared at her hands. She had both paper cones in her grasp but no wraps around her palm. It had been a full week since she fell and cut up her hand, so he could only hope that they were doing well. “How’s your hand by the way?” he asked. 

Max turned to him, rather surprised by the question. “It’s good? I think it’s alright. It’s definitely not infected.” Billy held out his hand to inspect the wounds. She gingerly laid her hand palm up into his, searching his face for any changes in his tenuous expression while he swiped his thumb near the closed gash.

“It looks good. You either took really good care of it or you got lucky.” 

She rolled her eyes again. “Of course I took care of it, it was on my hand.”

“So you wouldn’t’ve if it wasn’t? I don’t get that.” Billy added, “Why take the risk?”

“Why smoke and drink?” she rebuked.

“That comparison doesn’t make any sense, Max.”

“They’re both risks, aren’t they? Those affect important parts of your body, but internally. My hands are at high risk for infections because I have to do stuff and I use them, your lungs are at high risk for infections because you smoke and you use them, don’t you?” Billy let go of her hand and slowly blinked.

He narrowed his eyes at her. “Where are you going with this?”

“I don’t know. But you asked why I would take the risk, so why do you take the risk?”

He sat there in complete silence, processing what Max had said and thinking about it. Part of her wanted to ask for a response, but the other part of her knew that he probably wasn’t going to answer it either way. So, they just stared. Stared and listened to the wind rustle tree branches and crickets set up to begin their muse. She tore her attention away from him, looking off somewhere in the distance while biting her tongue.

“Thank you,” she mumbled, “for getting us snowcones and wanting to hang out with me.”

He remained quiet again, still contemplating what she said. But eventually, he responded to her. “You’re welcome. I had fun.” He weakly smiled at Max, waiting for her to do the same until she did and his grin grew larger. “It’s getting dark, we should head back.”

Max lightly chuckled, slowly standing up from the gravel and giving a toothy, Chesire smile. “Last one to the car has to buy snowcones next time!” She stuck her tongue out at him before taking off and manically laughing, almost tripping on the loose rocks a few times but managing to get pretty far before Billy realized what had happened.

“Hey, you asshole! _Get back here!_ ”

Max doesn’t know what happened two days before. She probably never will. And maybe that’s for the better, or maybe it’s for the worse. She doesn’t know how after they left he cried out of pure, raging fear and battled in warfare with his own mind. She doesn’t know how Billy caught feelings for Steve and hates himself for it. She doesn’t know about several things that have happened between him and Steve so far, and especially the things that have happened between him and Tommy Hagan. 

Her opinion of Billy is shifting, she can see how he’s changing and wanting to do better. Surely, it’s because Steve is there for him, all of this began after the supposed party, but she’s not too sure. 

She’s not sure what their intentions are or what they plan to do in the future, but she can only hope they stay together.

**Author's Note:**

> Hey there! Please leave your kudos and comments down below! I really appreciate any feedback whether that is through constructive criticism or support!
> 
> But anyways, I hope you all enjoyed this chapter. Next one will be coming soon, love you all!  
> :)


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